Death Harvesters:Style and formatting/Skills
This article provides information on starting, expanding on and completing articles relating to individual skills articles in Guild Wars. This information should be taken into account along with the more general information in Death Harvesters:Style and formatting. For information about using the skill templates rather than the articles, see Death Harvesters:Skill templates. Anatomy of a skill article Every skill article contains at least the template for that skill. The template should be placed at the beginning of the article only preceded by other templates such as Template:Skill-stub or Template:Cleanup. The skill template will produce a "fake" heading named "skill details;" place the skill's description, skill box, and progression (if applicable) into the page; and perform most, if not all, of the necessary categorization for the article (except when the template has "nocats = yes" set, see Death Harvesters:Skill templates#nocats). After the skill template there may be additional sections for acquisition, notes, trivia, related skills, and related articles (in that order). As per normal S&F guidelines, all headings should be lowercase besides the first letter. Any of these sections may be omitted if there is no information to place in them. Normal skills that players can use may have all of these sections but a monster-only skill will likely not have many of them. Acquisition The acquisition section should contain: *A list of all quests which grant the skill upon acceptance or upon completion. *A list of skill trainers and hero skill trainers that offer the skill: **For Prophecies, all skill trainers that offer the skill. **For Factions, all skill trainers before Michiko in Kaineng Center that offer the skill and the first trainer afterwards (from Michiko forward). **For Nightfall, all skill trainers on Istan that offer the skill, the first trainer afterwards if unavailable on Istan, and all hero skill trainers. *All bosses the skill can be captured from. **"Appropriate" bosses for non-elite skills are all bosses that can reasonably be encountered before the skill is available via other means. For example, in Prophecies, Aftershock can be captured in several locations before it is ever available at a skill trainer. *A list of secondary profession changers that offer the skill. Skills listed are to follow the above order. Elite skills If a boss spawn is tied to a quest, add the name of the quest after the zone name in the format "(zone name, during/not during/after/before quest name)". An example acquisition section body for an imaginary non-core elite skill with many means of acquisition: Core skills For core skills, the various means of acquisition should be broken down by campaign. An example acquisition section body for an imaginary core skill with many means of acquisition: Non-core skills For non-core skills, the various means of acquisition should omit the campaign heading when it is only available in one campaign. An example acquisition section body for an imaginary non-core skill with many means of acquisition: Notes The notes section essentially contains all information that is not covered by the other sections: bugs, clarifications, usage suggestions, particular combinations with other skills, and so on. Each distinct note should be its own list item. Remember to only add a note if it is useful and not obvious, don't just add notes for the sake of it. Trivia The trivia section contains information tangentially related to the skill in terms of the game. This might include information about the origin of the skill's name or icon. Related skills The related skills section should be a shortquick reference should be created. Each skill should have: *A bullet point before it. *Encased in the skill icon template. *Elite skills should end with (elite). *Duplicate skills should end with (duplicate). Example: Related articles The related article section should be a list of non-skill articles that are particularly relevant to the article's skill. For example, Animate Bone Minions's related articles contains links to Animate minion quick reference, Bone Minions, Corpse Exploitation, General minion mastery guide and Minions. Categories Any categories should be added at the very end of skill articles. For normal player skills, almost all categorization is handled by the skill template. Only Category:Duplicate skills, Category:Mantras, Category:Pet skills, Category:Storms, and Category:Touch skills need be manually added. For other skills, all categories need be manually added. However, to keep these skills separate from player skills (so as to not dilute the the categories by adding skills that cannot be used and are generally not of interest to people browsing the categories), skills that are PvE-only or not usable by players should only be placed in categories which are in Category:Special skills. Example Here's the wikitext for Shock as an example: Acquisition Skill Trainers: *Mazzim (Fishermen's Haven) *Tengsao (The Amnoon Oasis) *Dakk (Ember Light Camp) Notes *For very low energy cost, this skill does moderately high damage as well as knockdown. The fast knockdown can be very useful for interrupting or catching up with a fleeing foe. *An obvious disadvantage for its cheap cost is that it causes exhaustion. There is always a danger with cheap, fast casting/recharging skills of quickly filling the exhaustion bar. *This skill is perfect for combining with skills that deal extra damage to knocked down foes. Unlike regular attacks, this skill will almost always hit and requires no adrenaline. Examples include Aftershock, Crushing Blow, Falling Spider and Awe. Related skills * * Category:Touch skills Skill stubs Skill articles should be placed into Category:Skill stubs by adding Template:Skill-stub to the article if it fails to meet any of these requirements: *Follows the guidelines in this article *Has a skill template with a description, stats, and icon In addition, player skills have the following additional requirements: *Has progression data in the skill template (where applicable) *Has an acquisition section with at least one skill trainer for each campaign it is available in (for non-elite skills) *Has an acquisition section with at least one boss capture (for elite skills) For the skill trainer requirement, skill trainers in "training" areas such as Shing Jea Island or Istan (besides Kamadan) do not count. Skill templates For information about the various skill templates can be found at Death Harvesters:Skill templates. Category:Editing guides